Churchworkers.net is part of UCAN (The UK Church Administrators Network) which was founded in 2009. We are a not-for-profit company ltd. by guarantee, that works with churches across the UK to help strengthen the church’s approach to administration, management and governance. You can find out more about UCAN and the team responsible at churchadministrators.net. CWN is operated in partnership with others (see our partners page) who bring additional professional expertise and skills to this service. Our partners help support the oversight of the service and contribute to content, articles and support requests as required.

In addition to the expertise of our professional partners, the in-house CWN team are experienced people managers with upwards of 10years+ management experience in a church context. We have direct experience managing staff restructures, recruitment, dispute resolution, grievances, disciplinaries and various matters of HR process. Additionally, we have undergone CIPD training and maintain a CIPD membership. Our advice will be in line with the guidance and knowledgebases we can access through the membership of professional bodies, as well as the ACAS code of practice. If your request for support goes beyond our in-house capability, we will signpost and refer you to our partners and some of this initially referred support will be provided as an inclusive benefit.

Larger organisations with greater resources tend to have designated HR practitioners or departments. These specialists maintain HR qualifications, membership for professional bodies and devote regular time completing training courses, networking with other professionals and keeping abreast of updates in employment legislation and HR practice. At CWN we recognise this is not possible for most churches and HR is usually part of the remit of an employed or voluntary postholder. This is where CWN comes in.

Our desire for this scheme is to provide HR advice and resources to churches at an affordable rate. We will do the work of honing our skills and knowledge centrally, so you don’t have to.

CWN members can access support via phone or email, share in the provision of documents and templates and will be invited to relevant training webinars.

Download our Service Level Agreement here which outlines the specific services we provide and what falls outside our scope, ensuring you know exactly what to expect from us.

At CWN we are not employment solicitors, but we partner with a number of law firms who have experience providing employment advice to organisations and individuals working within the church sector. As a member of CWN, if you require the services of an employment solicitor, we will signpost you accordingly. Please note, CWN membership is for churches not individuals, and therefore if you are an individual (working for a church) who requires legal advice, please contact a solicitor directly, of your own choosing.

We're currently redesigning the model of CWN so that each member church has an inclusive number of hours per month/per annum of HR support, as part of their retainer membership. Further charges may be applied if a member church requires additional support, above and beyond their allotted amount of hours. Should this be the case, the member church will be contacted and charges agreed in advance of receiving additional support.

CWN members (churches) will need to appoint designated authorised individuals who can access the scheme on their behalf. We recommend appointing up to 2 authorised persons. Unless otherwise agreed, any authorised person will be permitted to enquire on open matters relevant to your membership.

Membership is subject to a minimum term of 1 year and you can cancel at or before the anniversary of your commencement/renewal date. Mid-year cancellations will not be awarded a refund.

CWN is a service operated by UCAN (UK Church Administrators Network), for UK-based Trinitarian Christian churches, in accordance with UCAN’s statement of faith. The scheme has limited capacity and will operate membership phases (each capped) to ensure we can grow our resource to support the scheme appropriately. Our membership page will confirm whether we are accepting new members or whether you can apply to join the waiting list for the next phase.

At the moment, CWN does not have capacity to serve organisations other than churches or churches outside of the United Kingdom.

Membership tiers will be assessed at renewal and each member will need to declare the number of employees. If you grow beyond a band mid-year, please tell us and we can issue you with a pro-rata invoice. However, please note that refunds are not due mid-year if you drop into a lower tier.

Support requests will be responded to within 2 working days. Working days are defined as business hours, Monday - Friday. For example, a support request submitted on a Friday will receive a response by the end of the following Tuesday, except when affected by statutory holidays and seasonal closures.

To compliment common church practice, the scheme will be closed for two weeks during Easter, Summer and Christmas. All seasonal closures will be advertised to the membership to provide the opportunity to access pro-active support prior to closure dates.

We will always advise you where we are unable to provide support or guidance. Where this is the case we will signpost and refer you to our partners or other recommended organisations. For example, we are not payroll specialists and wouldn’t seek to provide detailed financial guidance on the operation of payroll, however, we would signpost queries relating to payroll appropriately.

CWN is a remote support service and where possible we will provide you with the help you need via email, phone or video meeting.

If you need document templates and pro-formas we will endeavour to supply these for you, but you will be responsible for customising them and ensuring they are appropriate for your specific needs.

Some face-to-face support may be recommended and can be provided by CWN, but this will usually be chargeable.

Absolutely, we hope that you do. We are aiming to build a community which champions and develops best practice and we will happily consider any particular development or training requests.

Our membership rates are based on the number of individual persons employed by your church, not the FTE (full-time equivalent). This is the most appropriate way to calculate your HR requirements as part-time staff can need just as much HR support as full-time staff, potentially more.

No, not as yet but it is on on agenda for future plans. As the scheme grows, we hope to identify the most appropriate HR dashboard solution for churches and then to offer this at an affordable rate (additional cost) for CWN members.

No, we’re not in the payroll business. However, we can recommend our friends at Stewardship who operate a great outsourced payroll service.

If you want to operate Payroll in-house, we would recommend BrightPay.